One of the issues that people who are new to painting pottery have is worrying about making mistakes when painting. After all, we all want our creations to be something we are proud of when displaying it at home or giving it as a gift. And mistakes are easy to make when painting. Perhaps you got too much glaze on the brush and it dripped or splattered your piece of pottery. Or maybe you started out with a color you thought you liked, but after putting just one brush stroke, you’ve decided against it. After all, it is your prerogative to change your mind right? Luckily, as long as your piece hasn’t been put in the kiln yet, correcting small errors is actually fairly simple.

So here are some good ways to fix any painting mistakes you may make on your piece:

If the glaze is a light colored one, you can simply let it dry and paint over it with the darker color.

Even if you want to completely start over, never run bisque fired pottery under water to remove the paint. Instead, if the glaze is still wet, you can take a small damp sponge to wipe it off. This is a good way to remove large amounts of glaze from the pot.

For smaller errors, use a damp cotton swab to remove still-wet glaze

You can let the paint dry and scrape it off with a toothpick, wooden skewer, the tapered back end of a paint brush or a small piece of sandpaper or sanding stone. Remember to touch up underlying colors afterwards.

Make it part of the design! Sometimes you make “happy mistakes,” that can be incorporated into the design of your piece. After all, you are making a wonderful “hand-made” piece of art, so small mistakes should be embraced! So perhaps that looks like scratching off the mistake, but leaving the scratch marks to look like sgraffito art!

So come in today, and don’t worry about making mistakes, just come, have some fun and create beautiful works of art, or just enjoy the painting process. We look forward to seeing you at The Bent Brush!